Crystal Audio TX-2 THX Ultra2 5.1 Speaker System

Loudspeaker manufacturer Crystal Audio has unveiled its new TX-2 5.1 surround sound speaker package, which takes THX Ultra2 certification to a truly remarkable price point of £1,399, comprising the world’s most competitively priced and smallest THX Ultra2 floorstanders. Incorporating all the ingenious engineering, wonderful audio performance and class-leading levels of finish you’ve come to expect from Crystal Audio, the TX-2 5.1 THX system offers high- end home cinema at a fraction of the usual cost.

Central to the system are THX Ultra2 certified TX-T2SE floorstanding loudspeakers. These front channels embrace deep, though narrow cabinets. This profile delivers impressive low frequencies and unequalled wide dispersion, though without the coloration that can plague other floorstanding designs through drastic reductions in diffractions. Distortion is kept to an absolute minimum and there’s excellent accuracy, with plus or minus 1.5dB in the full range of eight octaves (70Hz-18kHz). As with all Crystal Audio speakers the TX-T2SE offers wide dispersion as well as clarity in spades, with an extra layer of richness being added through the extra low frequencies.

Its two 16.5cm Kevlar/fibre weave drivers — whose light yet extremely stiff mechanical properties deliver a linear and fast response — are housed in their own separate chambers, which in turn are ported. The cabinet is braced at critical points for superior rigidity. Such extensive strengthening of the cabinet panels maximizes the dynamic capability of the designs.

Significantly the TX-T2SE loudspeakers have an updated version of the company’s well known, proprietary ‘free air’ tweeter. This distinctive piece of engineering sits in its own ultra-rigid, spherical, aluminium enclosure on top of the cabinets. Its 25mm, silk-dome, Neodymium tweeter can be rotated to face ear axis, making room integration far easier. Free of unwanted diffractions due its shape, this tweeter technology delivers clear, transparent sound with optimum dispersion.

The speakers are also very amp friendly designs, with a sensitivity of 91dB, Complementing these new loudspeakers in the system are the THX-Center, a THX Select certified dedicated centre channel and the THX-D rear channel speakers, a pair of THX Select certified designs offering bipolar radiation from the drivers in phase.

Completing the package is a 200W active sub, with a 30.5cm long throw driver incorporating a light, but rigid, treated paper cone. High-powered for fast, dynamic, transient bass with sonic accuracy, the THX Select certified design can be placed anywhere in the room.

Throughout, the system incorporates low parasitic resistance components to minimize losses, gold plated bi-wire able terminals, while all the sturdy, optimally braced cabinets offer small footprints, meaning the system can fit easily into any listening room. The package is available in either Black Ash and high-gloss black finishes.

These products have been painstakingly developed at Crystal Audio’s dedicated research & development division based in Athens. This R&D team works in close partnership with several European universities and technology institutes, such as the Laboratory of Electracoustics at Patras University in Greece, on research programmes with the aim of building the best possible products. The result of these development programmes are regularly presented as papers at the international conventions of AES (Audio Engineering Society), of which Crystal Audio is a highly active member in both Europe and America.